Trades are hard to evaluate, especially in today’s NBA. The salary cap is always involved, especially now that two money aprons have been added, which means experts on both teams need both an advanced degree in finance as well as a certificate in cap calculous. Usually, the money numbers make trades more difficult to figure out for both media and fans.
But the Karl Anthony Towns deal isn’t hard to evaluate at all. There’s no winner in this deal, which has produced a pair of .500 teams that will face a hard climb to get back to where they were before the trade was made.
The Minnesota side of the Karl Anthony Towns trade
For the Timberwolves, this deal was always about money. Minnesota made an impressive championship charge early on, knocking off the Denver Nuggets, but their size-based roster struggled to handle the smaller, quicker Mavericks in the conference finals, and the Wolves got bounced.
Getting rid of Towns downsized that roster, both financially and on the court. Minnesota sold the trade by advancing the idea that Julius Randle would be a somewhat better fit, but Randle has always been a ball stopper who quickly wears out his welcome. His biggest selling point was that he cost less that Towns, and with a shorter contract at that.
Donte DiVincenzo was added as a quality defender who would add outside shooting, but the charter member of the Villanova Knicks has mostly looked miserable and played that way during his brief stint in Minneapolis.
To make matters worse, Mike Conley is aging out of his role as a veteran presence who can play, which has left the Wolves stuck in neutral at both ends of the floor. Anthony Edwards is already making noise about how selfishly everyone is playing--time to look in the mirror, maybe?--and Minnesota has already dropped to two games under .500.
The New York Knicks aren’t faring much better
Record-wise, the Knicks are hanging above .500 at 10-8, but they’re clearly not the same team. Much of the team’s defensive identity is gone with Towns on the floor, and most of the noise about how KAT and coach Tom Thibodeau would figure out the fit together is proving to be just that.
The Knicks can score, but they can’t stop anyone. They’ve given up over 120 points in each of their last four games, one of which was a 145-118 stinker against the Nuggets in Denver. They’re 2-2 during that stretch, which also includes an awful loss to the tanking Utah Jazz.
The bill of goods that’s being sold now is that New York will improve when Mitchell Robinson comes off the injury list in December. Robinson will give them more of a defensive presence, but the odds that the Knicks big man will stay healthy are problematic at best. And the odds that Towns will start to work hard on his defense are even slimmer, which means Thibs will have to do the best he can with a bad defensive team while periodically going ballistic behind the scenes.
Which team will find a better solution?
That would be the Knicks, for two reasons: (1) The Eastern Conference has been horrible so far (2) Teams with the kind of firepower New York possesses can usually find a way to stay afloat at .500. But the Knicks are now stuck with KAT’s massive contract, and the amount of money Jalen Brunson left on the table when he signed his extension almost guarantees that this situation won’t end well, especially for Thibs.
Minnesota’s situation is even more dire. They have an aging roster now with Rudy Gobert and Conley as important pieces, and Randle isn’t going to do anything to change what’s happening now. He’s going to get his 20 points a game until he gets hurt again, and ANT is going to make even more noise about how unhappy he is with the situation.
All of which proves one of the oldest adages in sport—sometimes the best deals are the ones you don’t make, and that’s definitely the case for the Knicks and Timberwolves as the NBA season continues to unfold.